


running through streets that were painted gold

by Cafelesbian



Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, lots of soft teenage love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 20:29:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian
Summary: Steve and Bucky have grown up around each other, their lives entangled in every sense of the word, their paths merged and worn through together. Inseparable, literally. Where Steve ended and Bucky began blurred, they’re so much a part of one another. Their hearts are tied by one string, wound gently between them, always taut, a constant push and pull that’s been there so long they can’t imagine what they’d each become if it was cut.Steve and Bucky, five and six to seventeen and eighteen, pre-tell me how to breathe in.





	running through streets that were painted gold

**Author's Note:**

> prequel but if you havent read tmhtb a) you should and b)if you read this you don't really need much background
> 
> obviously the title is from us lmao

_April, 1997—Five and six_

When Bucky and Steve meet, they’re five and six, and Bucky is still James, and they’re still babies so what would have probably been cosmic romance and love at first sight had they been adults is two smiles, is warmth that neither of them are old enough to recognize or notice. They’re in a sandbox in a playground in Bay Ridge. Steve notices Bucky because another kid, an older one, grabs his toy car from him, and Bucky tries to grab it back and the kid laughs meanly.

Steve hates that.

“Give it back!” he yells, and Bucky, who at the time is just a slightly taller kid with brown hair and eyes that are bluer than anyone Steve has ever seen, looks at him with big, nervous eyes.

The other kid scowls and pushes Steve, not hard enough to hurt him but hard enough that he falls, and then takes off.

It surprises him when the other boy, the brunette one with a cool red star on his shirt, kneels next to him.

“Are you okay?” he asks, sounding worried. Steve wipes his face and nods. “That was really mean of him.”

“He’s a bully,” Steve says, frowning. “But you’re not.” He can tell. He doesn’t know why, but he’s certain.

“Neither are you!” He smiles. “My name’s James, what’s yours?”

“Steve!” He smiles back. He likes James.

James smiles at him. “Let’s be friends,” he declares.

And that’s all it takes.

***

“I don’t like my name,” James tells him a few days later, frowning. Steve, with spectacular effort, rolls onto his stomach and frowns. They’re at Steve’s house, their first play date, their parents having let them. Their moms are downstairs drinking coffee. Steve and James are sprawled out on Steve’s floor.

“Why?” Steve asks him.

James shrugs. “I dunno. It’s just…” He waves his hands vaguely, making a troubled face.

“I like it,” Steve tells him, and frowns too. “Just pick a new one, if you don’t!”

James nudges his train over to Steve; he picks it up and makes it fly, and when that makes James smile it makes him smile too. “I can’t do that, silly,” he says, like Steve should know that.

“Why?”

“I just can’t make up a name!” He shoves Steve, but it’s really more of a bump.

Steve laughs. “Well, what’s your middle name?”

“Buchanan.” James flops himself down onto the bed. “It’s stupid, too. My mommy says it’s a president’s name, but I don’t even know that president.”

“I think it’s cool,” Steve says. “But shorten it! Make it easier!”

James eyes him. “What do you mean?”

“What about Bucky?”

James thinks about it and grins. He likes Bucky. It feels special, like his, rather than a name he doesn’t like that really belongs to a president he doesn’t know.

Plus, Steve thought of it, and he likes everything that Steve likes.

“Okay.” He giggles. “Now I gotta get everyone to call me Bucky.”

“Yay!” Steve hugs him. “Bucky. Yay.”

They inform Bucky’s mom that that’s his name now. She chuckles and says that’s fine. She doesn’t expect it to stick, but within a few weeks, no one calls him James anymore.

***

_December, 1999–Seven and nine_

Bucky is supposed to come over when their phone rings, and Steve’s mom goes for it. Steve hears her talking, then say, “Oh, no. Oh, god, Winifred, is he… his arm? You can’t… oh, my god. Oh, my god. You poor things, poor Bucky—” Steve looks up from his coloring. “My god. Okay, sweetie, try to take a breath. Steve and Joseph and I are on our way.”

Bucky’s mom is crying when Steve gets to the hospital. He’s never seen a grown up cry. It scares him, a little bit. She’s really crying too, sobbing loudly while Bucky’s dad rubs her back and tries to look strong. 

Steve is scared. His mom explained gently that a bad guy was driving dangerously and hit Bucky. “Crushed his arm,” was what she said. “Baby, do you know what amputation is?”

He didn’t. And when she explained it, Steve felt cold all over.

Right now, no one is letting him see Bucky, and it makes him wanna cry. 

“I wanna be there with him!” Steve yells up, between the four grown ups exchanging quiet, important, sad words.

His mom sighs, bending down. “Honey, I don’t know, Bucky might need his parents first, and you can see him real soon—”

“No!” Steve whines. “No. I wanna see him, I gotta tell him it’s okay! I gotta.”

“Steve,” his dad tries, “Bucky’s gonna be scared, and upset. It isn’t gonna be easy for you.”

Steve shakes his head stubbornly. They don’t get it, that that makes him need to be there more. He hates the thought of Bucky being scared and upset. Bucky should only ever be happy. “Then I gotta make him feel better.”

“Steve, honey, you can see him as soon as he’s feeling better,” Winifred says. She’s still crying a bit. “He… it’s… please, honey.”

“I would want Bucky to come see me!” Steve says, and tugs desperately at his mom’s sleeve. “Please, _please_—”

“Why—why don’t you let us go first, hon,” Winifred says, rubbing her eyes again. “And then, as soon as he says he wants to see you, you can come.”

He tries to argue, but eventually they go in and they leave him there, his mom and dad holding his hand, staring at the door that Bucky is behind.

He doesn’t have to wait long, maybe only a few minutes, though it feels like more. Winifred, though, comes out.

“Steve?” Winifred says. “He wants you to come in.” She gives him a sad smile that isn’t really a smile. Steve barrels in, pushing past a nurse to do so. Behind him, Winifred bursts into tears again.

Bucky is still in bed. He looks tiny, wrapped in white everywhere, his face so sad that Steve feels a hollow, swooping pain in his stomach. He slows down a little, hoisting himself on the chair next to him. He’s miserably curious about what Bucky looks like with one arm, but there are so many blankets and bandages that he can’t tell.

He still looks like Bucky. Steve is relieved.

“Hi, Bucky,” Steve whispers. Bucky’s eyes are red and swollen. He doesn’t smile, but Steve doesn’t mind.

“They cut off my arm,” Bucky whimpers. Steve squeezes his other hand.

“I know.” He watches him sadly. Bucky, his best friend in the whole world, his favorite person out of anyone, even all the superheroes he likes and characters in Harry Potter. None of them matter like Bucky does.

“Are you—are you still gonna wanna be my friend?” Bucky says quietly.

“I’m always gonna be your _best friend_,” Steve tells him, squeezing his hand tighter. “You’re still Bucky.”

Bucky’s crying again. “I can’t play hand games anymore. Or play catch. Or do cartwheels.”

“So we’ll do new games,” Steve says firmly. “I think you’re cool. You’re like a superhero, or something!” Bucky gives him a small, small smile. “Like Terminator!” That movie scared them for weeks after they watched it.

“It hurts,” Bucky says softly. “It feels so weird. It’s like it’s there but it’s not.” His eyes well with tears again. Steve feels a strange, unfamiliar hurt swoop in his stomach. “Now we can’t become cowboys. Or astronauts.”

“Yeah we can! What about Woody in Toy Story 2?”

It makes Bucky laugh a little, a small, coughing noise. “It’s gonna be okay, Bucky,” Steve says quietly. “‘Cause I’m with you to the end of the line.” He’s not sure what that means, or where it came from, but it feels right.

Bucky sniffles. “Will you stay with me now?”

Steve doesn’t need to be asked. He clambers into bed next to Bucky, carefully, so he doesn’t hurt him, and lays down.

“I love you, Bucky,” Steve says, squeezing his hand again.

Bucky shivers a little. This time, he squeezes back.

***

_July, 1999—Eight and nine_

Their parents take them to the beach a lot that summer, mostly because Bucky’s parents are still spoiling him following the accident. He’s doing better. He was in the hospital for a while, and Steve went every day to see him, but once he got out there wasn’t much that changed. He’s still Bucky, after all. He can still do almost everything, maybe slower, but Steve promises him anytime he needs, literally, a hand, he’ll do it.

Next to them on the beach, two guys have settled down, grown ups, with a dog. Bucky and Steve are busy making sandcastles, so they don’t really pay attention, not until the dog trots up to them and they squeal with delight and pet him.

“Sorry!” One of the men yells, grinning and running up to them. He’s holding hands with the other guy. “Hey, he likes you.”

“Steve! Bucky!” Steve’s dad yells immediately, jumping to his feet. “Boys, come back here! Now, please!”

It surprises Steve when he realizes he and Bucky’s parents all look unhappy.

***

_March, 2000—Nine and ten_

One day, they’re kicking trying to finish a project (a story for school that they’re partners on; Bucky is writing the story, something about best friends who have to go to a war together, and Steve is doing the drawings) when Bucky looks up suddenly.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you think about homosexuality?” Bucky stumbles a little on the word, not used to it.

Steve blinks. “Oh.” The question surprises him. “I don’t know. My parents say it’s bad.”

Bucky frowns. “Me, too.”

They’re quiet for a minute. “I don’t really think that, though,” Steve shrugs. “I mean, it doesn’t seem bad to me. It’s just like in movies, only with two guys or girls instead.”

Bucky thinks about this, and gives him a tiny smile. “Yeah,” he says, “okay. I think so, too.”

***

_June, 2002—Eleven and twelve_

“I hate rollercoasters,” Steve tells Bucky, for what must be the sixtieth time that day.

They’re looking up, eyes wide, at the Cyclone. Bucky is grinning. Steve would prefer a root canal.

“But you love me,” Bucky says, sing-songing the words, and grabs his hand. “C’mon, Stevie. Please. You’re finally tall enough.”

Steve groans and lets Bucky drag him on.

It’s probably a three minute ride, but Steve almost dies about thirty times. Bucky loves it, of course. Bucky holds his hand through the whole thing, grinning ridiculously.

“See!” Bucky yells at him when they get off, wildly excited. “That wasn’t bad!”

Steve throws up immediately.

“Oh, Steve.” Bucky pats his back, biting back laughter. “Aw, Stevie. Buddy, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Aw, man, are you alright?”

“Screw you, Bucky,” Steve groans. 

“Okay, pal, fair,” Bucky says. “Here, we can do the wonder wheel, you can handle that, right? But sit first, I’ll grab you some water…” 

The thing, Steve realizes later, is that he’d ride the fucking cyclone a hundred more times or see Bucky smiling like that, to hold his hand.

***

_March, 2003—Twelve and thirteen_

Bucky’s hungry.

It’s not that his parents are letting him starve, or anything. It’s just that they’re preoccupied with other things, and leaving their son with dinner that he doesn’t have to heat up isn’t a priority.

They’re out working again, and he’s at Steve’s. For people who work a lot, they don’t seem to bring much home for it. Maybe it’s not their fault, but still.

He tells Steve this, and Steve sits up immediately. “Let’s go get dinner,” he says, “a good dinner.” He’s so determined that Bucky sits up too, and follows him out.

They’re old enough now that they can pretty much always go out alone, so they do. Bucky misses when they were younger and they’d hold hands all the time. Then he’s annoyed at himself for thinking that.

While he’s wondering why he wants to hold Steve’s hand, Steve points to an Italian place. “I think it’s good,” he says, and then does, in fact, grab Bucky’s hand. His heart does a little flip. “C’mon!”

“How are we gonna pay for this?” he asks, when they sit down. Steve gives him a sheepish look.

“It’s okay,” he says, “we’ll figure it out.”

“Steve…” Bucky starts, but then a waitress comes to take their order, and Steve shushes him.

Basically, Bucky thinks, they’re stealing. Although they aren’t going to lie, they’re just going to admit that they don’t have money and hope for the best. “It’s a victimless crime,” Steve says importantly, and he sounds so sure that Bucky goes for it.

Plus, the pasta and meatballs he has is the first good thing he’s eaten in ages.

The waitress isn’t happy with them. “Can you call your parents?” she asks, annoyed. A little flare of panic goes off in Bucky’s chest. Steve pales a little, too.

“Put it on mine,” someone says, and they both swing around, astonished. A guy, probably early twenties, nods to her and pulls a card out of his suit.

The girl looks startled, but then she nods.

“Thank you!” Bucky blurts out, relief slamming him. “Mister…”

“Stark.” The guy winks. “Don’t go around dining and dashing, kiddos. Doesn’t get you anywhere. Now hop along, before she changes her mind and calls the cops.” He waves them along.

They don’t need to be told again. They scurry out, running, conveniently holding hands again, and they end up on the playground by their house, laughing and pushing back and forth on the swings. Adrenaline is still pumping through Bucky, not completely pleasantly, but then Steve takes his hand again and it all settles.

“We’ll get a place together,” Steve says, “and I’ll sell paintings, and I’m gonna cook you whatever dinner you like every night, Bucky.”

He squeezes Steve’s hand, even though it feels somehow like the wrong move. Steve squeezes back.

***

_January, 2004—Thirteen and fourteen_

Winter of eighth grade, Steve gets sick.

Steve has a notoriously poor immune system and brutal asthma that’s only gotten worse the more he tries stubbornly to ignore it, so the flu knocks him down hard. He’s bedridden for a few days, miserable and bored and genuinely wondering if this is going to kill him, and after three days of arguing Bucky gets his parents to lift the quarantine and let him come over.

“You look like shit,” Bucky tells him, the second he enters the bedroom. Sarah makes a noise, and Bucky looks up and grins sheepishly. “Sorry, Mrs. Rogers.”

She smiles, shaking her head, and leaves them.

“I feel like it,” Steve groans. “God. This is the worst. You should go find a new best friend who can play sports and race you and stuff. Just remember me, after I die.”

“Don’t be dramatic, idiot. You’re gonna be fine. What is this, a cold?”

“The flu,” Steve says miserably. “And it’s worse ‘cause asthma.” His lungs, as if to make a point, give out so he coughs violently for a few moments.

Bucky pats his back gently. “Sorry, Stevie,” he says, and genuinely sounds it. “I missed you. School sucks without you.”

“Go do something good,” Steve tells him. “I thought Connie was gonna ask you out. Take her to the movies, or something.”

Bucky makes a face. “I don’t wanna go out with Connie. I wanna hang out with you, dumbass. You think I’d leave you on your deathbed for some girl?”

“She’s pretty,” Steve says, and he can’t keep the jealousy out of his voice. He thinks fever must be clouding his head. Jealousy is stupid and insane, Bucky is his best friend. He just likes being with him, is all. He doesn’t want him to start spending more time with some girl.

Steve imagines Bucky holding her hand, making eyes at her, kissing her, and a wave of nausea that has nothing to do with the flu slams him.

“I don’t have a crush on her,” Bucky declares, as if it’s final. Steve smiles, despite himself. “Move over, punk.” Gently, he shoulders Steve to the edge of the bed, so he can lie down next to him. “Your mom said we could watch Star Wars, if we go downstairs.”

Steve blinks. Bucky looks pretty. He doesn’t know when he started thinking of him as pretty, but it feels right, blue eyes and high cheekbones and long eyelashes that could put all of Steve’s favorite paintings to shame.

“Wanna stay here, for a little?” Steve asks him. He feels better than he’s felt in days, suddenly, lying next to Bucky,

Bucky smiles at him. “Yeah.”

***

_2005—Fourteen and fifteen_

Steve realizes eight months later, in ninth grade that he’s in love with Bucky.

He and Bucky have grown up around each other, their lives entangled in every sense of the word, their paths merged and worn through together. Inseparable, literally. To the point where really, neither of them have ever made any other best friends, because when you were close in the way that they were, it simply didn’t matter. Where Steve ended and Bucky began blurred, they’re so much a part of one another. Their hearts are tied by one string, wound gently between them, always taut, a constant push and pull that’s been there so long they can’t imagine what they’d each become if it was cut.

At fifteen, Steve is on the other side of a growth spurt that can only be called miraculous, a transformation that effectively cured his asthma and presents only wonderful opportunities for teasing a rather disgruntled 5’ 6’’ Bucky. He joins the high school soccer team for it and meets Sam, and that’s when he realizes most best friends don’t think of each other the way he thinks about Bucky.

Because, very quickly, he loves Sam, loves laughing with him, loves the effortlessness in every interaction they have, loves holding the fact that he can do more laps than him over his head, would ride into battle next to him in a heartbeat. But that’s all it is, easy love, definable and uncomplicated. It’s not falling asleep next to him at sleepovers, watching the flutter of his eyelashes and listening to the pattern of his breath until he turns over and makes himself stop. 

Part of it is his bisexual awakening, the lightbulb flicked on when he watches Ghost (with Bucky, of course) and can’t decide if he’d rather be Patrick Swazey or Julianne Moore and he’s utterly convinced Bucky can read his mind but when he looks across the couch Bucky’s eyes are so wide on the screen that Steve decides he’s not paying any attention to him.

He mumbles out an excuse and goes to the bathroom and tries to not feel disgusted with himself.

Kissing a girl seems nice. Kissing a boy seems nice. Kissing Bucky seems like it would send the stars into a frenze until they cleared and spelled his name out in the sky for Steve. It makes Steve’s head hurt to think about. Bucky is his best friend, his other half in everything. If Bucky knew Steve was thinking about him that way he’d never speak to him again. He can’t have that, he can’t have Bucky hate him. He’d rather pine forever than admit to Bucky that he loves him and face his disgust. 

***

Connie asks Bucky out.

Connie is the prettiest girl in their grade. She’s sweet, and smart, so Bucky says yes.

Steve didn’t know how bad jealousy could be. It lays a bitter frost over everything, and when Bucky leaves him, Sam, and Nat at a pizza place to go meet her, Steve accidentally spills his soda in annoyance.

“Are you good?” Natasha asks him, eyebrow raised, as he stabs at a garlic roll.

“I like Bucky,” Steve blurts out, before he can think about it. Sam and Natasha watch him. His insides unwind, too fast and too hot, and he suddenly wants to cry.

“We know,” Sam says, after a minute, giving him a strange look.

“No—” Steve scrubs a hand down his face. “I _like_ him. I love him. I’m in love with him.”

They’re both silent, expressions neutral on him. Logically, they won’t care. Natasha likes girls and Sam’s parents both work for the ACLU, but there’s still the moment where Steve feels like he’s missed the top step, his heart plummeting with a _what if they hate me._

Then Nat smacks Sam in the shoulder and yells “You owe me ten bucks!”

“What?” Steve gasps, appalled. He stares at them; Natasha looks triumphant, Sam looks annoyed, but neither of them look shocked. “You had a bet.”

Sam slaps the money into her hand and says, “Dude, try hanging out with you and Bucky. It’s like being at a wedding.”

Steve blinks several times. “But you lost,” is all he can think to say. This information grates, not entirely pleasantly, at his brain.

“Oh,” Nat says simply, “the bet wasn’t whether you’re crushing on him. We know that. It was whether you or Bucky would admit it first.”

“He likes you back,” Sam adds, like it’s obvious. “I bet you anything he shows up at your place early tonight talking about how he doesn’t like Connie. Actually, I bet you ten” —He glares at Nat— “I need it back.”

Steve is so astonished that he agrees.

He shoves a very satisfied looking Sam ten dollars in algebra that Monday.

***

Bucky doesn’t have a realization. He’s spent so long crushing on Steve that by the time he acknowledges that that’s what it is, it’s almost a relief, only it’s not, it’s so scary that it makes him sick.

Since he understood romance as any kind of concept, it’s what he felt for Steve. When he was eight and his parents took him to a wedding, he spent the next week thinking about when he married Steve, because that seemed inevitable. Steve is his best friend; he loved Steve more than anyone, more than anything, so why wouldn’t he want to marry him?

He heard the word homosexual for the first time when he’s nine, on one of the days his parents decide it’s time to pretend to be committed Catholics again. It’s spit by the priest, his face vicious, and his parents nod in disgust.

“What does it mean?” he asked them later.

His mom pursed her lips. “It’s when people think it’s okay to be with the same gender,” she said, her face cold in a way he’d never seen. She sighed. “Baby, it’s not really appropriate to talk about. I don’t like you to know about these things.”

And even at nine, Bucky’s gut hollowed out with a dread that never really resolved itself.

Being gay is the worst thing that could have happened to him. It makes losing his arm look like a mild inconvenience. It’s made infinitely, unbearably worse by the knowledge that he wants his best friend to kiss him.

Steve is straight, he tells himself. He thinks it’s so often that the words must be scorched on the inside of his brain by now. It’s what he reminds himself when he cries himself to sleep wondering if Steve would have him if he ever told him he’s gay. It’s what he thinks when he catches Steve looking at him and his aggravating, useless little heart jumps in hope. It’s what he repeats when Steve touches his arm or hugs him goodbye and poetry starts composing itself.

Steve isn’t wrong like him. Steve is straight.

***

_May_

“I think I’m bi, actually,” Steve mutters to Bucky on his roof, as if the words don’t take everything Bucky holds for granted and make it all groundless. He sounds nervous, nervous in a way that’s so un-Steve that Bucky pinches himself to make sure this is real.

Relief hits him before excitement. Steve isn’t his parents, Steve doesn’t think it’s disgusting, Steve is like him, Steve is like him, he didn’t fuck everything up by being this way.

“Steve, I don’t care. I’m gay.” He’s lightheaded. Steve’s eyes go huge, light blue washing over him and making everything okay.

Bucky is already soaring, but when Steve blurts out “And I think you’re the person I like,” Bucky must ascend to the stratosphere.

“You like me?” Bucky whispers. His voice has gone hoarse. Everything has slowed to syrup. Steve likes him.

Steve likes him.

“I kind of love you, actually,” Steve mumbles. He’s looking down, like he’s scared. Like he hasn’t just given Bucky the holy grail. Like Bucky would do anything but love him.

“I kinda love you, too,” Bucky says. His voice quivers embarrassingly.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, stupid.” Bucky can’t stop laughing.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve blurts out, and Bucky’s breath lilts as he nods quickly. 

Steve cups his face, honest to god cups his face like Bucky is precious, and it turns him to starlight. He can’t possibly still be a person, not when everything in him has become light and champagne bubbles and joy.

Then Steve kisses him, and Bucky loves him so much that he decides he must still be a person after all. It’s not what he imagined. It’s softer. It’s everything. It makes him want to scream to the priest and his parents and everyone who has ever called it wrong _fuck you, look at this, this is bigger than anything you could ever believe in, this is everything that has ever mattered, _because it is.

“Your lip is swollen and gross,” Bucky mumbles when they break apart. It’s all he can say that won’t melt him into honey.

“Fuck off,” Steve says warmly. Bucky kisses him again, giggling through it. It’s sweet and soft and so Bucky and Steve that his heart turns over in his chest.

“Wanna be my boyfriend?” Steve asks. Casually. Not like he’s giving Bucky the only thing he’s ever wanted.

“I guess I’ll try it,” Bucky answers. Casually. Not like his world has just suddenly sprouted up into something worth living in.

**

_2006—Fifteen and sixteen_

Steve and Bucky spend sophomore year and their first several months of dating not hiding that they’re a couple, but not exactly advertising it either. No one at school would care much, beyond a little gossip. The people they’re avoiding are their parents, all of whom suspect nothing. They’ve spent their whole lives attached at the hip, anyway, so it’s hardly anything new that they’re always at each other’s house.

They’re in most classes together, and dating means a little more transparent cheating (“Helping,” Bucky says with a grin, while he copies Steve’s math homework). Bucky excels in English and does well in history and terribly in math, and Steve is good at science and Spanish and decent at math, and eventually it all evens out to them both doing fairly well, not scholarship well or honor roll well like Sam and Natasha, but well enough that their parents give them smiles after every report card. They both have jobs, Bucky at a little bookstore in Park Slope and Steve at an ice cream store a few blocks away, and their bosses hate them because they’re constantly hovering around the other while one of them is off the clock, and really, it’s a miracle that they’re not sick of each other but boredom has never really been a part of their relationship and they simply don’t get tired of being together.

Eventually, people work it out. Most people don’t bat an eye. Connie approaches Bucky and apologizes for forcing heterosexuality on him, and he bursts out laughing before realizing she’s serious. A few people give them dark looks, but Steve glares back and they back the fuck off.

Dating Bucky is very much like being Bucky’s best friend, only with kissing and hand holding and calling him ‘baby’. Dating Bucky is letting his arm go stiff around his shoulders when they go out to movies because he doesn’t want him to lift his head from where it’s rested. Dating Bucky is drawing him and not feeling creepy about it.

It’s happiness, in the simplest, biggest sense of the word.

Steve’s at soccer practice one evening, and Bucky is waiting for him. He’s in charge of the school newspaper, and the meeting just ended, and they’re about to head home together. He grins at Steve from the sidelines, and Steve grins back and he’s so fond that he completely misses Sam’s pass to him.

Afterwards, Bucky tucks himself into his side and kisses him. Steve kisses back.

“Fuckin’ fags,” he hears, and swings around so fast he gets whiplash.

Gilmore Hodge, a beefy kid from their grade as cruel as he is stupid, is sneering at them.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Steve pulls his arm from Bucky to approach him, shoulders thrown back. These days, when he does this, he’s tall enough that people usually back off. Gilmore doesn’t.

“Already gotta share a fucking locker room with you, I don’t need to see you and your cripple boyfriend sucking each other—”

He doesn’t finish, because Steve punches him.

He’s punched people before, but it always surprises him how much it hurts his hand. Gilmore rears back with a howl of pain, then lunges at Steve, getting a strike to his face, and then it’s just a shriek of noise and pain. Steve’s hitting him, he thinks, but he’s also getting hit, and it’s happening too fast for him to be afraid or angry or strategic, it’s just about trying to process the hideous pain in his head and stay present so it doesn’t kill him. Something garbles in his throat, blood or a scream. Something wails. He doesn’t know what it is. 

Eventually, someone hauls them apart. Sam and Bucky have grabbed him, and two other guys from the team have grabbed Gilmore and the coach is screaming at them both but Steve doesn’t care because he was speaking that way to Bucky. No one treats Bucky that way.

***

He gets two days of suspension, which is only because the principal is probably gay and sympathizes with Steve when he tells him what happens. He heads out after a good scolding and a few snarks at Gilmore, his limbs too heavy for his body, his head throbbing with a pain that seems to have taken on a breathing, writhing life of its own.

Bucky is out front, waiting, and when he sees him he throws his arm around him so fast it knocks him back a little. Steve winces, but it doesn’t matter. He breathes in Bucky, so close to him, the smell of his hair right there, and the fact that he might have a broken nose doesn’t matter.

“Are you okay?” Bucky’s voice shakes. He pulls away, touches Steve’s face so gently. His eyes well with tears, and Steve hates that.

“You should see the other guy,” Steve says, and grins a little. Bucky responds by smacking him on the shoulder, admittedly not hard, but Steve grimaces anyway.

“You’re an idiot.” Bucky says. “Are you suspended?”

“Two days,” Steve says. “Could’ve been worse.” Bucky still looks way too upset for Steve’s liking, and he adds, “Baby, I’m okay. Really.”

“You can’t just do stuff like that,” Bucky tells him. His voice has softened a little, but he’s genuinely pissed. “Steve, that was so fucking dumb.”

“He was harassing you,” Steve says. Bucky rolls his eyes and scoffs. “No one fucks with you.”

“Steve, he was beating you up.” Tears push through Bucky’s voice. “Babe, god. It was fucking scary to watch him… and you’re suspended… you can’t do that. Please, Steve, it’s so fucking stupid.”

Steve says, softly, “Buck.” Bucky looks up, stricken and worried. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. If it helps, I won’t punch anyone else for you ever again.”

Bucky forces a breathy laugh, then hugs him once more. “C’mon, Rocky,” he says. “I gotta fix you up now, I guess.”

So they go home, arms slung tight around each other.

***

_March, 2007—Sixteen and seventeen_

“What,” Steve asks Bucky at the beginning of junior year, “do you wanna do after high school?”

It’s late, but they snuck out. Right now, they’re on the rocks in DUMBO, cuddled close, water lapping vaguely at the shore, light spilling into the waves.

“I dunno,” Bucky says honestly. “I wanna write. I wanna be with you.” That’s the truth. If he has those two things, he has everything. Steve smiles warmly down at him.

“Our families aren’t gonna help with college,” Steve says. It’s a statement of fact. Neither of their parents have saved anything for them, neither have breathed a word of essay writing or SAT prep, certainly haven’t encouraged them. If they were going to do that, they’d do it on their own, and it just doesn’t tug at them with the urgency that it should. Steve wants to do art, Bucky wants to write, and they want to be together. A college degree just doesn’t feel crucial to any of that.

“Nope,” Bucky agrees, “but fuck them. The second I’m eighteen I’m out. I don’t need to owe them.” Things have been bad at home. His mom was fired and his dad has been spending longer nights away, and recently, his dad sat him down and tried to have a rather aggressive conversation with him about girls that sent Bucky into a panic attack later that he knows.

“Can we get a place?” Steve asks, and smiles. “Just find an apartment and work and figure it out from there?”

Bucky looks up and smiles back. “I’d really fucking love that,” he says, laughing.

That’s where the plan is born.

***

__

The Sands Motel in Montauk doesn’t ask for their IDs and doesn’t care when they ask for one bed. Bucky imagines they aren’t the first teenagers to come here to lose their virginity. It’s small and grungy, worn by time and lack of care, and Thunder Road plays in the background as a bored employee checks them in.

__

“_You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re alright_,” Steve tells Bucky, and Bucky smacks him.

__

They start by kissing. They’ve done an awful lot of that. Bucky straddles Steve, kisses him slowly, and eventually, Steve tugs at his shirt and then they’re going faster, excitement racing through Bucky’s head and chest and fingertips, giggling with giddiness.

__

“Where’s—where’s the stuff?” Bucky asks, between kisses.

__

Steve mumbles, “Outside pocket of the bag,” and Bucky leans just far enough off of his lap to grab it, accidentally slamming Steve’s stomach rather hard with his elbow.

__

“Oh, my god,” he gasps, covering his mouth, “Babe, I’m so sorry—” But Steve doubles over in laughter and kisses him, and warmth washes over Bucky.

__

The lube is impossible to open. Steve tries it with his hands, and then gives up and rips it off with his teeth, sending it spurting over his chest.

__

Bucky nearly falls laughing at him. “You’re such an idiot,” he tells him, wiping it in vain with a tissue, and Steve scowls but he’s giggling, too, and they go back to kissing but their teeth click and then they’re just laughing more, instead of kissing or trying to set the mood.

__

Eventually, they try to somber up, but even that feels odd and stiff, and they laugh more and that’s easier. Steve is excruciatingly careful with it all.

__

“Tell me if it hurts, or whatever,” he stammers, “I don’t wanna fuck it up—”

__

Bucky snorts, “You trying to turn me on there, Rogers?”

__

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re good? You sure?”

__

“Steve, if you ask me that again, I’m gonna elbow you again on purpose.”

__

“Are you nervous?” Steve whispers.

__

“No,” Bucky answers, and smiles. “Are you?”

__

“No,” Steve breathes.

__

The position they end on, after considering several, is Steve leaning over Bucky and Bucky’s legs around his hips so Steve can angle correctly. They both liked it the most, wanted to be able to look at each other and hold each other. 

__

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, “Steve, Steve, Steve.” And he kisses him through it, and Bucky feels his heartbeat thrumming through all of him, and he’s sure Steve must hear it and he thinks he hears Steve’s too, but maybe it’s all the same, maybe it always has been. Steve is so slow and careful and clumsy and perfect and beautiful, the warmth between their bodies replacing what had once been space, but there isn’t space and there never can be, never again, because if Steve stops touching him like this, stops holding him, Bucky thinks his heart will give out. But Steve doesn’t. Steve pushes his hair back and holds his waist and kisses his neck and Bucky wants to put this moment into poetry but the words for it don’t exist in any language, because the emotion that fills him is impossible and all he can think is love, but this is more than love, this is more than anything that has ever been.

__

“Bucky,” Steve gasps. “Oh, my god. Fuck, you’re so perfect. I love you, I love you.” Bucky realizes he’s gripping Steve’s shoulder and back harder than he meant to, but he’s terrified of the world snatching him away.

__

“I’m not hurting you, right?” Bucky whispers.

__

“God, no. Never. Fuck.” Steve kisses him again. “Should I try, um… moving?”

__

Bucky laughs, and Steve laughs, and leans his head down so their foreheads meet. “Yeah.”

__

“I’m gonna—I’m gonna go slow, tell me how it feels or if you want me to stop—” And Steve does something ungodly with his hips that makes Bucky arch his back up, sensation rolling over him.

__

“I might kill you if you stop,” he gasps. “Jesus Christ, Steve.” His legs must have tightened around Steve’s waist, and Steve does it again and he lets out something like a sob but it’s only good, Jesus, it’s good, and Steve’s lips on his neck and his hands on his back have sent him scattering into bits of starlight.

__

“Buck,” Steve almost whimpers, so much behind the name that it sends Bucky to pieces. “You’re okay? It doesn’t hurt—”

__

Bucky cuts him off by rutting his hips into Steve, a movement that makes them both choke out noises that catch in their throat, and then they’re laughing and kissing again and they’ve found a balance, a push and pull that’s rather like the nature of their relationship that has always been only right now, it’s literal and it’s making Bucky see new colors behind his eyes. Steve had been so worried about doing it wrong, about it being bad, but Jesus Christ, this could never be bad. Bucky kisses the spot where Steve’s neck meets his shoulder, hard.

__

They don’t last more than a few minutes, and then they just hold onto each other, breathing and kissing and laughing and saying each other’s names because every other word in any language has simply ceased to exist. Bucky wonders if they’re different now. He doesn’t feel different in any fundamental way, doesn’t feel like their relationship has transformed. He just feels close to Steve, but he’s always felt close to Steve. It didn’t change them, he thinks. It just added one more thing, just became another part of the thing that he knows, that Steve knows, that everyone knows, which is that he’s Steve’s and Steve is his and BuckyandSteveSteveandBucky is all there is and all there has to be. Virginity, he thinks, is insane, but there’s something to be said for a closeness like that with someone else. He can’t imagine that with anyone except for Steve. He realizes he’ll never have to, and smiles.

__

Steve traces his jaw and down his nose and across his lips, and Bucky kisses his fingers. 

__

“I’m starving,” Bucky says suddenly, and they both burst out laughing, because they’ve had sex for the first time and that’s the first real sentence either of them have spoken.

__

“Me, too,” Steve tells him. Then Bucky kisses him again, deep and slow.

__

They order fries and sandwiches from room service and eat after showering together and kissing and laughing and murmuring I love you some more. Titanic is on the tiny motel room tv. Bucky lies on Steve’s chest, cradled and loved as Steve plays with his short hair and Jack and Rose slink around the ship together.

__

“Buck?” Steve says suddenly. Bucky glances up. “We should just get married as soon as we’re both eighteen.”

__

“You’re just saying that because you just fucked me,” Bucky says dryly. Steve chokes on his fry.

__

“Not true, I’ll propose to you in English next week to prove it—”

__

“Stevie.” Bucky pushes up on his chest, pecks a kiss to his lips. “I’ll marry you in a second, okay? You don’t have to tie me down now.” He winks, and Steve laughs and kisses his nose. Bucky lays against him, contentment and love knocking him breathless. “I think you look like young Leo,” he adds sleepily, and nods to the TV. 

__

“I’d kill Cal Hockley for you,” Steve replies with a grin.

__

“I know you would,” Bucky replies, and kisses his bare chest.

__

***

__

Several weeks later, Bucky asks Steve is he wants to go on vacation with him.

__

“Vacation?” Steve repeats, blinking.

__

Bucky shrugs. “My parents won some auction. Five days at Cape Cod. And you better come, because if I have to be alone with them for that long I might go looking for some cute Massachusetts guy to distract me.”

__

“Well, in that case…” Steve grins, tossing his sketchbook aside and leaning over Bucky, holding his wrist down to kiss him. Bucky giggles. “Nah, that sounds good. I gotta check with my parents, but count me in.”

__

He goes, of course. It’s very pretty, maybe a step above Montauk, and Bucky is just happy. They go to the beach alone, and Steve kisses him in the waves, and Bucky wonders if this happiness can really last. He thinks it can.

__

***

__

“Do you have a girlfriend these days, Steve?” Winifred asks at dinner that night.. Bucky smirks, and, without missing a beat, nudges at Steve’s ankle with his foot. Steve chokes on his salmon.

__

“Steve’s got people falling all over him,” Bucky says, “right?”

__

Steve gives him a blank look. “I don’t have a girlfriend, no,” he tells her, and smiles politely.

__

“Aw, c’mon,” George pushes, “Handsome, talented guy like you? Like both of you.” He looks between them. Bucky drops his fork, picks it up, and squeezes Steve’s thigh in the process. Steve bites his cheek to keep from laughing. “I’m shocked you two have gone through high school without dating much.”

__

__

“Just haven’t found the right person, I guess,” Steve muses. Bucky stops playing footsie and kicks him.

__

“Steve, you really are like another son to us,” Winifred says. “We know you’re both graduating, and you might want to move out and get jobs and maybe do college in a year or so once you’ve saved, but I hope you know you’re always welcome.”

__

“Yeah, Stevie.” Bucky grins. “You’re like a brother to me, pal.”

__

Steve stamps, not hard, on his foot.

__

Later, after Bucky’s parents have gone out for a drink and Bucky and Steve have sucked each other off in the vacation house shower, they curl up against one another on the pullout (“You two don’t mind sharing, do you?” Winifred had asked, and Steve had faked a coughing fit not to laugh).

__

“I’d die if I lost you,” Steve says suddenly. Bucky looks up and blinks. It’s a rather somber thing for him to say, especially in this uncomfortable pullout couch with Bucky’s parents a few rooms away.

__

“Bit dramatic,” Bucky tells him, rubbing his chest. “You’d find some other hot guy and be fine.”

__

Steve doesn’t laugh. “No, seriously. I think about it sometimes, like, what would happen, and I just… If I didn’t have you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

__

Bucky traces his jaw with his finger. “That’s a stupid thing to waste your thoughts on,” he says, after a moment, and smiles. “Because you’re never gonna lose me.”

__

***

__

One night, Bucky rings Steve’s bell uninvited. They spend more evenings than not together, so it’s not a surprise when he gets it and Bucky’s there. It is a surprise that Bucky’s shoulders are hunched in, his body trembling, tears running down his cheeks.

__

“Buck?” Steve sounds worried. “Hey, hey, babe, what’s going on?” Without hesitating, Steve pulls him into his arms, tight and safe against his chest, and Bucky sobs without being able to help it.

__

“Can I—can I—can I stay here tonight?” he whispers, still pressed against Steve’s chest. He feels Steve shift and kiss the top of his head.

__

“Yeah, baby, of course, you know you always can. C’mon, we can go upstairs and talk, yeah?” Bucky nods. Steve double checks his parents are still in the kitchen, then takes his hand and squeezes.

__

“Dad? Bucky’s here, he’s gonna sleep over!” Steve calls.

__

“Hey, Bucky!” Joseph yells back.

__

“Hi, Mr. Rogers!” Bucky calls shakily. Steve squeezes his hand again, then wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him upstairs. Bucky sinks onto his bed, hand shaking. Steve sits beside him and wraps an arm around him.

__

“Want some water, baby? Or some tea, or food?” Bucky shakes his head; instead he pulls, needily, at Steve, burying his face in his shoulder; Steve strokes his back.

__

“My dad came home hammered again tonight,” Bucky mumbles. Steve sighs. He knows things have been bad, lately, that George’s salary got slashed and he’s been angry. He takes his hand, thumbs over his knuckles. “He, um. He hit me.” Some strange, unfamiliar force writhes inside of Bucky. He recognizes it a moment later as shame, as disgust, and he realizes his fist is clenched and somehow, it feels like his fault. “Not… not hard, or anything,” he adds, wincing. “Just… I yelled at him, and he, um. Yeah.”

__

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment, and panic throttles Bucky. Then he whispers, “Jesus Christ, Buck, oh, god. Oh, baby. I’m so—oh, god.” Steve’s face goes hard with what Bucky knows is anger, protective and warm, sending a weak, surprising rush of love through him. Steve pulls him closer, kissing the top of his head. Bucky can feel the tension coiled in his knuckles. “I’m so sorry, baby. If you need—you can always stay here, you gotta be safe—”

__

Bucky shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “It just scared me,” he says softly. “I just—I didn’t think he’d—he’d ever do that.”

__

“He shouldn’t have,” Steve grits out. “Fuck, baby. God. _God_.” Bucky shudders and presses closer to him. “What can I do for you right now, baby?”

__

“I don’t know. Just stay.” Bucky curls small into Steve’s lap, pressing against him. Steve is so safe. Steve always makes him feel so, so safe. 

__

“Hey,” Steve says gently. He touches Bucky’s face, his hands more careful than usual, and Bucky looks up. “It’s really nice out. You wanna bring some blankets and stuff up and sleep on the roof?”

__

Bucky chokes out a laugh. “Really?”

__

“Yeah. Just… go somewhere quiet, me and you?”

__

So they do.

__

It’s pretty out, warm, a rare night where the sunset bleeds orange across the sky, where a few stars are visible. The moon is stamped, a perfect circle, in the sky, slicing neatly through the darkness. Cars tear by below, mangled by distance, just a rush of noise that eventually bleeds into the skyline and the air.

__

Steve’s body, steady and still, against Bucky’s, is the only real thing in the world. New York could cease to exist, the rapture dragging everyone away, the cars shuddering to a stop and the lights flicking off in some final orchestratic performance, but it wouldn’t matter if Steve stayed there with him, holding him and breathing. He wouldn’t even notice.

__

Steve thinks, that night, as Bucky lies against his chest, breathing shallowly and unhappily, that if George Barnes or anyone ever hits Bucky again, he will tear them limb from limb. Nothing will hurt him. Nothing.

__

***

_ _September, 2008 — sixteen and eighteen_ _

“Hey,” Bucky laughs, laying his head in Steve’s lap and folding Steve’s arms over his chest. “You’ve never actually told me your bi epiphany.”

__

Steve laughs too, bending down to kiss his forehead. “Patrick Swayze in Ghost.”

__

“We watched that together!” Bucky sits up, grinning at the memory.

__

“Yeah,” Steve says, pausing to peck a kiss to his lips. “Yeah, and I thought you were gonna figure out what I was thinking. It was _traumatic,_ Barnes, I was seriously stressed out.”

__

Bucky giggles, sliding into Steve’s lap and laying his arm around his neck. “Wanna know something? I really wanted—” And, rather uncharacteristically, Bucky cuts himself off and blushes.

__

Steve nudges him. “What?”

__

“It’s embarrassing.”

__

“Well, now you have to say,” Steve tells him. “Buck, you’re killing me.”

__

“I used to, um, imagine doing that with you.” Bucky’s skin is warm in Steve’s neck. “That scene, ‘cause you’re an artist and everything. Exactly how it goes.” He’s red in the face.

__

Steve grins at him, inconvenient arousal stirring in his chest. “Who are you, in this scenario?”

__

“I can’t pick _you_ up,” Bucky mumbles, laughing a little.

__

“Who’s yours?” Steve asks him, still smirking. Bucky rolls his eyes at him.

__

“Thor.”

__

Steve scoffs. “From Nickelodeon?”

__

“Have you seen him?” Bucky replies, flicking Steve’s shoulder just to get under his skin. “Nickelodeon or not, he’s gorgeous.”

__

“So go have passionate pottery sex with him,” Steve grumbles.

__

“If he offered…” Bucky says, winking. 

__

Steve, rolling his eyes, pushes him lightly down and grins and says “You’re gonna regret that,” and tickles him until Bucky shrieks for him to stop, laughing hysterically.

__

“The ghost scene, huh?” Steve muses when he lets Bucky go, kissing his hair with a smile.

__

“Always a fantasy,” Bucky says slyly, and kisses him before he can say another word.

__

***

__

“My parents are out all night,” Steve tells Bucky a few weeks later.

__

“I’ll be there,” Bucky says before Steve even invites him. 

__

Steve winks and kisses him and says, “I’ll see you at six.”

__

Steve fucking Rogers is topless and in jeans and blaring Unchained Melody from a record player. Before he’s flattered or turned on, Bucky is in hysterics, unable to believe that Steve is real. Then, of course, he jumps into Steve’s arms and kisses him slow and gentle and deep, laughing through it, impossibly in love.

__

“Sorry I don’t have a pottery wheel,” Steve tells him, after, while they lie together and watch Ghost again.

__

“As long as you don’t go getting killed in front of me,” Bucky replies with a smirk.

__

***

_ _January, 2009 — seventeen and eighteen_ _

They’re in a diner in Park Slope, tucked discreetly into a corner booth, sitting obnoxiously on the same side so Steve can drape his arm over Bucky’s shoulders. They’re talking, like they always are, about their future. The chances of anyone who knows their parents seeing them here, cuddled up unnecessarily close, breaking conversation to peck a quick kiss to the other’s cheek or hand or lips, are much lower here. It’s a little dark, in the hopes of channeling some whimsical beach-town diner, but really it’s just a lot of ugly wood and uncomfortable dark green pleather.

__

Steve’s gaze falls, distractedly, on the oversaturated tv mounted in a corner, a New York 1 report about some bank CEO who’s being exposed for cheating on his wife with three strippers. Bucky glances over at it too, and they watch for a moment purely out of inability to pull away, not because of interest but because televisions in restaurants always seem to have that effect.

__

Steve shakes it off and glances at Bucky, who looks up at him and snorts. “What a prick,” he says dismissively, and turns back down to their little notebook that’s packed with packing lists and cost predictions and plans that are going to become their future, their real life together. Steve smiles at it.

__

New York 1 is now interrupting their cheating broadcast to announce that CEO Tony Stark has been rescued from the desert. They watch this for a moment with slightly more interest, until Bucky smirks and says “The one percent are having quite a day,” and Steve bursts out laughing.

__

“Did he buy us dinner once?” Steve asks suddenly. Bucky chokes on his waffle laughing at the question.

__

***

__

_July_

__

Steve brings Bucky coffee in the middle of work, earning them a smile from the Park Slope mom purchasing Obama’s book. “Thank you,” Bucky tells her, handing over the receipt, and she beams.

__

“I gotta run to work in a minute, too,” Steve says. “But I just wanted to tell you I love you.”

__

Bucky leans over the counter to kiss him. “I love you more.” 

__

Steve smiles, slipping behind the counter to hug him. Bucky wonders how life aligned like this for him, how he ended up this lucky, in the arms of the gorgeous guy he loves more than words, getting ready to move in and build a life with him. 

__

“Hey,” Bucky says, grinning at him. “New Harry Potter movie comes out next week. We’re seeing it, right?”

__

“Oh, obviously.” Steve smiles back. “I’m so excited.”

__

“Me, too.” Bucky pushes himself up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Okay, I’ll see you tonight, right? My mom and dad are out.”

__

“I’ll be there.” The sunset casts gold over Steve. Bucky loves him so much. “Sam wanted to talk to me about something, so, I should go to his place before. I’ll be there by six.”

__

“Exciting.” Bucky kisses him once more. “Okay, go make money to pay our rent. I love you.”

__

Steve salutes him while he leaves. Bucky stares fondly after him.

__

In six hours, their lives are going to change irreparably. Right now, though, they’re teenagers, almost adults, giggling about their future together. Right now, suffering means double shifts serving frozen yogurt and parents who piss them off. Clueless and blissful and wholly unprepared.

__

**Author's Note:**

> :) You guys already know what ur damn comments do to my heart
> 
> jessemovie on tumblr
> 
> next chapter for the sequel will be sunday most likely take care pals


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